The Pens had plenty of giveaways last night, and many of them were due to stupid mistakes. But I think I noticed a more systemic problem with their breakout that led to a lot of the turnovers.

(1) The pens may have adjusted their breakout so that the center came back deeper in the Pens' zone, but the wingers remained stationary and the Isles had their lanes covered. A lot of the turnovers resulted from the lack of puck support one the breakout. They had no one to pass to.

(2) Similarly, when the D did get the puck to a forward, they couldn't carry it into the zone. The forward with the puck dumped it (correctly) but the stationary wingers had no speed to chase the puck down. This led to an easy retrieval for the Isles.

(3) After retrieving the puck, the Isles could easily swing it up the opposite-side boards. The Pens defensemen, following the play, had not yet arrived at the blue line to hold the puck in. Then, they were confronted with the decision to pinch or give up the blue line. Fearing the odd-man rush created by the Isles' speed, they frequently gave up the blue line.

I also think this lack of puck support causes problems in the non-controlled-breakout setting. The wingers are just too far away from the defenseman, which forces the dman to throw the puck up the boards or try to beat someone one on one.

In 2009 playoffs, the puck carrier always always had a guy close by supporting him, often times behind him. It allowed the Pens to maintain possession with short passes---which is what Blsyma was preaching when he first came on board---even if it meant going backwards or sideways.

Now Blysma's system is all about getting the puck up ice as soon as possible. And as a result the Pens never have the puck. It ends up right back in their zone.

What happened to his puck-possession philosophy? He implemented his new system in 2010, when he had a full training camp to do so. And the results speak for themselves.

I don't know, I stayed up late last night and rewatched a lot of that game.

To me the biggest problem was losing almost every race to the loose pucks, there was no 50/50 pucks in that game, it was 100% the islanders were going to get to it. The Islanders figured that out and the forwards were streaking up ice before they had possession of the puck. This allowed them to get passes with speed through our neutral zone and make our D play them 1 on 1 with no support. Compound that with our forwards were still stuck turning around it created a lot of scrambling and Islanders having uncontested passing lanes to start the cycle and control the puck. Our inability to win the foot races to the puck prevented us from exposing the cheating forwards of the islanders that were already streaking out of the zone and making them pay. There were even times when we would seem to be winning the footrace but instead LET the Islanders player get it instead so they could hit them. The problem was the Islanders were chipping it up faster than they were being hit because the Pens were not taking away the boards in order to be in a position to make the hit.

Sure we had breakout problems of our own, but I really think the crux of the problem was what I outlined above.

Tonight was great. They either had the stretch pass or came up the ice three strong with a bunch of small passes. Pierre talked like the Isles were stifling us in the first, but I disagreed. We gained the zone plenty. Sometimes we did not, but what else do you expect when a team is playing a 1-1-3 trap. The tradeoff of that style, however, was less sustained pressure in our zone, as the team hung out in the neutral zone.